On 16 April 2025, a day after Iranian filmmaker Sepideh Farsi’s intimate documentary “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk” was announced as a selection of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the ACID parallel section, the film’s subject, Palestinian photojournalist Fatma Hassona, along with nine members of her family, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on their home in the Gaza Strip. Suddenly, what had started as a film about life during wartime became an elegy for a woman whose spirit and smile will endure forever. 

As I seek to contextualize the impact of this stunning work of nonfiction cinema, I want to share what my colleague Isaac Feldberg so beautifully wrote out of the film’s Cannes premiere, which took place on May 15th, less than a month after Hassona’s murder: 

Farsi got her start photographing political protests in Iran before being forced into exile; she seems to intuitively grasp the unfathomable nature of her subjects’ daily circumstances, asking questions that guide their conversations as often toward beauty as bloodshed. […] The movie’s unconventional visual approach, which finds the director holding up one smartphone to record another, makes it impossible to forget the barriers separating this filmmaker from her subject.

Farsi came of age in Iran in the decade leading up to the 1979 revolution. An activist from a young age, while she was still a student, Farsi spent eight months in prison for hiding a friend and schoolmate during the 1981–1982 Iran Massacres. Although she had always found inspiration in the visual arts, she practiced photography in her home country. After finishing secondary school in 1984, she left Iran for Paris to study mathematics. Eventually, Farsi began making short films, and over the last few decades, has directed over a dozen shorts and features, working in both narrative fiction and documentary.

For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke to Farsi about her film’s unique visual language, how making this film irrevocably changed her relationship to image making, and her hope that people will remember the unwavering spirit and singular life of Fatma Hassona forever. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I’d love to start by discussing how you filmed your conversations with Fatma. The way you filmed these conversations, the viewer can literally see the technology that helps you two have this conversation. Could you talk about your decision to film the way you did, and also your thoughts on how technology can both isolate and connect us in such a beautiful way?

This was a subversive use of technology. But not only that, it was clear that our connection was fragile, unstable, and unpredictable, because it could be cut off at any moment, and each conversation could be the last. The one on April 15th was our last conversation, without either of us knowing it.

Filming with a mobile phone is a low-key approach that, on the one hand, confers openness and modesty to the image. Which, strangely, opens the image rather than closing it due to the default or technical limitations. On the contrary, it really opens it in a plastic way. Plastic, meaning the image becomes like a painting at times: Low-key, pixelized. That could only happen with this kind of filming, and not with a high-tech camera or 4K filming. This was one reason. 

The other reason was to be at the same level. Meaning that our conversations were going through two mobile phones, and I wanted to keep that same level, not to have a hierarchy of another camera taking over. That’s why I decided to film the mobile phone with another mobile phone, rather than with a camera. The third reason is that the whole witnessing that we have of this genocide and that of the massacres, everything arrives on our mobile phones. We also see it on TV sometimes and on computers, but most of the time we are on our phones scrolling through social media, witnessing the graphic nature of these images. 

So I intended to create a different type of image with this low quality, which makes it more human, more open, in a way. Of course, the decision was made quickly, but I analyzed it more afterwards. It was an intuitive decision. Then, as time passed, I got used to it. I never thought I would change it. 

The other decision was the framing. I put the phone vertically so I could really focus on her face. What I liked was also leaving some open space on the left and right, because had I taken both our faces, or had I kept it the other way, or had I cut, I would have lost those two bands left and right. That gives the image more depth. You see things happening around it—on my side, especially, and a little bit of my computer, my cat passing from the back. I think the intention was really to give the image some breathing room.

You said in Q&As that making this film changed your whole perception of image-making. Was that something that came when you were editing the movie, or was there a moment earlier when you realized your entire philosophy of film had changed?

It happened gradually. I’ve always been somewhat impatient and very speedy in motion. Filmmaking is a mix of quick action and long-term preparation, especially in editing and post-production. With this film, the filming was a long-term process, and also the editing and all the rest around it. Still, there was always this feeling of emergency that I felt that I needed to do something quickly with these images, to share them with the rest of the world, because I was aware of the importance of these images. For some reason, I was convinced about that right from the beginning. 

When the film was finished and when Fatma was killed in a targeted attack, then it really, I think, flipped in yet another dimension in terms of my relationship to image making and to images. Because now, when I pick up a phone to film, there’s a part of my head thinking, what’s going to happen to these images, what will I do with them? I’ve never had that immediate thought before in my other work. This time, something happened—whether or not she was targeted in relation to this film or because of her photojournalism—that led to her being targeted. But in any case, the fact that she was killed had to do with images. She said the camera is a weapon. This is not in the film. I kept it out, but there was a conversation where she said that. And indeed, the camera is a weapon. 

So yes, it totally changed my relationship to image-making. Now I’m thinking differently about my new projects—or my old projects. I’m going back to those that were in development before. My sense of priority, my feeling, and my physicality in image-making have changed. It’s not the same anymore. I need time to re-evaluate, because I’m still so much in the film and traveling with it every day. But yes, my relationship to image-making has changed a lot. 

Fatma mentioned she wanted to photograph everything, to capture everything, to bear witness to everything, and publish it all. But obviously that’s difficult. The more you publish, the more people, at least in America, get desensitized to imagery, and that’s where curation comes in. As you were having these conversations with Fatma, I believe you said you had about 80 hours of recorded conversations. How did you curate the film so that you told a story, as opposed to publishing essentially an eighty-hour live stream?

Publishing everything in this case would not have made sense, as the volume would have diluted the impact. So choices needed to be made. What guided me? Basically, my compass was emotion, also information, but mainly emotion. I needed to build a narrative. It is a documentary, but you need to develop a narrative arc with the images. So I really focused on the conversations where we were closest, where she was most eloquent, when her feelings came out, and when she was conveying something substantial in terms of emotion and information. It usually was when something extraordinary happened. So that’s how I made my choice about what to do with this huge chunk of footage. Then gradually the structure became clearer. It was like making a sculpture.

Editing is always a bit like that, except that I was alone for most of it —until the very end. Then I had an advisor who helped me a lot. Farahnaz Sharifi, a great editor and Iranian filmmaker herself, really helped me make the last cuts emerge. The decisions, for instance, to keep the news excerpts were there from the beginning. I was conscious and confident that I needed to keep it and to date the film with them. So it was a matter of how to use them and how to build the rhythm and the tempo. 

Then the photography is, of course, her images. That was the last thing, which was very important for the film, and I believe it became clear towards the end of the editing process where exactly they needed to be used.

What was really striking was seeing her vibrancy start to dampen. Her hope is always there, but you see her face grow gaunter as she isn’t able to eat as much. She’s still helping others, but I think you can see something change internally. The camera captures that. It’s really powerful. What was that like for you to witness? At one point, you say, “I can’t do anything,” and she responds, “You’re here with me.” That’s the power of human connection. 

Well, the film, as you watch it today, if you take out that last conversation part, the end is that long traveling shot. That was the real end that I had intended for the film. She filmed that for me. This was the real ending of the film until she was killed. Afterwards, for a few weeks, I was unable to do anything to the film. I mean, I was working on it to make it ready—finishing post-production and sound—but basically I had decided not to change the editing at all. 

Then, at the very last moment, maybe ten days before the premiere, I decided that I needed to put a little bit of that final conversation, and that’s how it is now. I intended to keep it as it was when she was alive. She hadn’t seen the final cut. We were supposed to see it together at Cannes. 

By seeing these images the way we are exposed as powerless witnesses to the horror of maimed bodies, bodies that have been made unrecognizable, burnt or scattered, I mean horrible things that we see. But also people who have been dehumanized through propaganda. It makes us, on one hand, numb, because when you witness a lot of graphic images, many people tend to look away to protect themselves, either not believe it or look away, thinking they cannot stand it. 

So another decision for me was to keep the war outside the frame, and keep it only through the sound, which is something that is, in my opinion, a powerful way to present the permanent and persistent presence of the military actions and the ongoing war and genocide. Through sound alone, our mind imagines the rest as we focus on her words and her face. Her face is like a territory in flux. We see the changes on her face, as you said, but it is a soft, very enlightened face that is slipping away gradually, and that is the ultimate horror of it. 

The rest comes through the sound only. This is what makes it so strong, I think: it’s not an image you look away from; her face is so magnetic that you keep following her. And what she says is also very strong, but you always have the quadcopters flying over, and you hear the gunshots and whatnot. This was a deliberate decision: not to include graphic images. 

What it was like to witness her face change and that internal change, and how it made you feel that?

Extremely bad. I told her this was the least that I was telling her. I felt much worse than what I would say to her, but it was very frustrating. If you really love somebody, you’re attached to the person, you feel the person is just drifting away, you can’t do anything, and the only thing you can do is talk to the person, and that too isn’t often. It creates a very aggressive feeling of powerlessness. But I had to do it because I didn’t have a choice. All I could do was be there for her whenever she could connect. I had to come to peace with that feeling, that with that guilt

I loved that you included her family members, both her younger brother on camera, but also the family members who’ve been martyred before you spoke with her. I wondered if you felt, in a way, that you were archiving these lives, archiving their existence, archiving these individuals?

Yes, because, even if—and I wish it were the case—gosh, even if they were alive, the connection is so fragile that I never knew whether we could connect the next day. Because of the unreliable connection, the sheer fact of disconnection was due to Israel’s control of the whole telecommunications system. So anytime they decide to, they cut it. I know that very well as an Iranian. The regime does the same thing, the Iranian regime, whenever they want to do it, they make a blackout, they just cut the internet, and that’s it, and you’re left with nothing. 

So, from the very first moment I got in touch with her, through that first connection, I knew. That’s why my camera was already ready. I mean, I was already recording when she answered. This was the case every time I called her, because I knew these moments were impossible to recreate. They were unique, so that sense of archiving was there all the time.

We talked a bit about the news footage that you included. I wondered at the time if you followed how the US news was covering these same stories and how you chose which coverage to include in the final film?

I did have that systematic filming of newsreels, in the sense that I had already started from the very beginning—actually, very early after October 7—during this episode of the conflict. I started filming the TV even before I met her. So I have hours and hours of footage, depending on where I was at that moment. I always had Al Jazeera and then either French media or CNN. I did think at some point that it’d be interesting, because I did film the same event, told differently by different outlets. Still, if I had used that comparison and put those same events together, it would have taken over the film’s main timeline, which, for me, was our conversation. 

So I decided to keep the news footage to a minimum. So, the way I chose the footage for each event, instead of using different media next to each other, I chose the one that was most eloquent to me, in either a good or in a bad way, and that At some point, Netanyahu was talking on, I think it was CNN, and so I put that moment in the film. At another point, it was Biden in France, so I chose that one. The UNICEF one, I remember very well, was an Al Jazeera one, which I find very striking, because at that moment the UNICEF chief was just revolted. He’s in the field, talking, and he doesn’t know how to keep his anger in check or control his reactions to this frustrating blocked aid situation. 

During the editing process, for each piece of information I needed to include, I picked the one I thought was best. Sometimes it was the way the image was shown, or the way I had filmed it, because I was commenting on the news myself while filming, in the way I was filming—zooming, letting a reflection in, or allowing my own image in the frame. 

For instance, that moment with Netanyahu, there’s my shadow on his, and I thought that was quite a clear comment, in the way I was filming it. No other comment was needed; the image in itself was, and because I didn’t make any modifications or interventions afterwards, what you see in the frame, as a frame, is the frame I had while I filmed. I didn’t change anything in post.

I was also really interested in the way you included so much of Fatma’s art, beyond her stunning photojournalism. You have her beautiful poem, and there’s the song that she sings. How much of that did she share with you, and how did you choose which of her works to include?

She started sharing many things with me very quickly. I think she wanted to. It was nice for her to share with someone. So, she sent me a song very quickly. I listened to it, and I was like, ”This is her voice.” Then I asked her if she sang, and she said yes. I was amazed at the beauty of the song she sent me. It’s not the one that is in the film. It was another piece. I asked her to send me more. That’s how it started. 

And it was the same thing with her poems. She sent me a poem before I asked her to read it. She told me she was a writer, so I asked her to share some of her work. When she did, I translated them. The next time we connected, I asked her to read one for me. It was fascinating because what you see in her photos is also evident in prose, texts, and other pieces of writing. In all of her work, there was this common denominator of her sensibility, the same eyes that would describe something through words or through images.

It was interesting for me to put them next to each other. So I have some of her writing. Some were destroyed during the attack, and I don’t think there are any traces of many more, but I have some. A dozen or so poems that she shared with me.

Her poetry is so striking. She comes up with such unique imagery not just in her poetry but also in her everyday conversation. Something she said in a normal conversation became the title. It’s such a striking turn of phrase, and it just came out. You can really see her brilliance in how she speaks every day.

Her way of building images is what I really loved. I have been asked this question: why not speak in Arabic, and why did we speak English together? I did try to talk to her in Arabic. I understand Arabic, but I cannot speak it. You didn’t ask this, but I’m saying it to explain that I think, through the limitations she had in English, and because of her sense of poetry, she would build images with her limited words. Sometimes, instead of having the exact words, she would create an image. And this sentence is similar to that. 

The film title is, instead of using a sophisticated word or expression, you know, she just builds poetry while talking in real time. And this was the brilliant thing we had, and this is why I prefer to keep talking to her in English: then she would invent new expressions, new words, new images. 

How did the perspective that she brought to life change your ideas of how you look at life?

It changed my perspective, yes. In terms of my faith and religious belief, no. But in terms of belief in life and hope, yes, it did affect my vision.

At one point, she quotes the line from “The Shawshank Redemption” about hope being a dangerous thing, and I believe, in the film, you say you hadn’t seen it. I was wondering if you watched the movie to get the context?

This is a weird thing. I can’t bring myself to watch it. I’ve sat down like ten times to say, “Okay, now you have to watch this.” I asked my daughter to find it for me. But it’s hard for me to sit down and watch it. So I haven’t yet, but I will definitely. Every time someone asks me, I say, “No, not yet, but I will soon.”

I was wondering how you felt about witnessing her humor and resilience, built on hope and humor, even though she doesn’t think she’s a normal person, keeping that bit of normalcy amidst not just this current moment of genocide but generations of oppression?

I’m sure you remember what I told her there: that hope is a dangerous thing, but we need it. I do mean it exactly for the reason that you’re saying. Partially, because if you do not have hope, then you will probably lose your mind and do something crazy, or you will just let yourself die and not hold on anymore. In the case of Iran, I told her that we have third and fourth-generation Iranians who are fighting for their freedom. Every time we go from bad to worse, but if there were no hope, people would give up. She said hope is a dangerous thing, but I think she meant you need hope. This is why she was saying it. It was a strange way of expressing herself, by negation; she was saying that because she had that smile. 

During the whole conversation, she’s just smiling, and it’s not amazing. She looks like an icon. I mean, the image was breaking. Her face was becoming like a painting with that low light, you know? She used to put open pages on her phone to light her face when it was too dark, and we were desperate to talk. So she said, “Let’s see. I’ll do something.” Then all of a sudden, her face was brighter. I would ask what she did, and she would laugh and respond, “I opened a page.” 

That conversation was a very special moment within the whole series we had. A day earlier, she had sent me that series of photos that are in the film afterwards, of the kid washing the blood and flesh with the water, which is the most horrible thing, but also the strongest thing, and most confrontational photos she ever did, and sent to me, and I had received them the night before that conversation. Still, in the film, I use them afterwards. I asked her about her choices and curation, how she thinks, and what commands her when she takes photos, and she explained the mechanism to me. So, then I put the images for the viewers to see what we were talking about. 

What do you hope people will take away from the film when they’re done watching it?

Palestinian dignity. Fatma’s smile. Hope for humanity. Her face, her words, her personality, become a face for the many Palestinians, many stories that have no face and no identity. The way she personifies that cause and that identity, I think, is so open and generous that it resonates with many other stories. That’s how she becomes an icon or representative of her people. So I want the audience to take these positive aspects away with them after they watch the film, and the fact that she wanted her death to be loud, and her photos to travel. I hope that people will remember her forever. 

Are there any women who have either made films in the past or make films contemporarily that you find inspirational or that you think more people should see?

In my view, there is a whole new school of documentary filmmakers in Iran who’ve done brilliant things and are doing so now. These women are all roughly the same generation, filmmakers, activists for women’s rights, and dissidents. One of them is the person whom I named earlier, Farahnaz Sharifi. She made a film, which I find really brilliant, that was at Berlinale last year, called “My Stolen Planet.”

Oh, I saw that. I loved that film. That’s another one that’s really about reclaiming archives. 

Exactly. There is another person, a filmmaker named Mina Keshavarz, who made a film titled “The Art of Living in Danger.” She also works a lot with archives. There’s another filmmaker of the same generation and group; actually, they all made a film together called “Profession: Documentarist,” which features eight or ten filmmakers. 

The third one I was going to mention is Firouzeh Khosrovani. She won IDFA (International Documentary Festival Amsterdam) a couple of years ago with a film called “The Radiograph of a Family.” This year, she had a film in Venice called “Past Future Continuous.” It’s a documentary, but it’s also a reenactment. It’s the story of a woman in exile in the States, unable to return to Iran, who asks a company to install CCD cameras in her parents’ home in Tehran so she can watch them from afar. The whole film is done through that perspective.

 It’s co-directed with Morteza Ahmadvand, another artist. I find this idea brilliant. It’s a powerful statement about the whole of Iranian society and this distance, and, in a way, it relates to my film, too, because she fills the gap with technology. It’s a very interesting film.

There are many others. Delphine Seyrig has inspired me a lot. Marguerite Duras, in a different way. But who else? Agnès Varda, of course. She’s one of the greats.

The work of filmmaker and historian Martin Scorsese needs no introduction. The director behind countless iconic and award-winning films like “Taxi Driver,” “The Departed,” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” has been a part of the American film firmament for over half a century. At the same time, his tireless work preserving and promoting world cinema history is practically unparalleled. 

It is on this vast canvas that filmmaker Rebecca Miller paints “Mr. Scorsese,” her five-episode exploration of Scorsese, the man. Miller aims to look deeper into Scorsese’s soul via interviews with the filmmaker himself, his long-time collaborators and companions like Robert De Niro, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Isabella Rossellini, contemporaries like Brian De Palma, Paul Schrader, and Steven Spielberg, and even childhood friends and his three daughters, Catherine, Domenica, and Francesca. Miller weaves their insightful observations and anecdotes about Scorsese at various points in his life with footage from Scorsese’s many projects to interrogate the connections between his personal and professional lives, which often blur into one indistinguishable body of work. 

No stranger to the limelight herself, Miller is the daughter of playwright Arthur Miller and photographer Inge Morath. She attended Yale University, where she studied painting and literature. In the 1980s, Miller began showing her work at galleries, often including non-verbal films to accompany the exhibits. In the early 1990s, she had supporting roles in films by the likes of Alan J. Pakula, Paul Mazursky, and Mike Nichols. In 1995, her debut feature film “Angela” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Her next film, “Personal Velocity: Three Portraits,” was adapted from short stories from her own book, which had been named the best book of the year by The Washington Post in 2001. She directed her husband, Daniel Day-Lewis, in the father-daughter drama “The Ballad of Jack and Rose” in 2005, and adapted her own writing again for the 2009 ensemble dramedy, “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee.” She followed that up with the screwball comedy “Maggie’s Plan” starring Greta Gerwig, Ethan Hawke, and Julianne Moore. Her most recent film, “She Came to Me,” opened the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival. With her first foray into documentary filmmaking, 2017’s “Arthur Miller: Writer,” she turned her lens inward, exploring her father’s storied life and career. 

For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke to Miller about crafting a portrait of Martin Scorsese, the man, through the lens of his film work, finding the story in the editing process, and what it’s like to connect with another artist on a deeply personal level. 

Scorsese has had such a long career. What was the genesis of the project?

It was really gradual. It was something that was generated independently. My producing partner, Damon Cardasis, and I were discussing who my next subject would be for a documentary, who we might want to make a film about. I immediately mentioned Marty. We started working on it at the beginning of the pandemic. We did the first two interviews on my porch because we had to. We self-financed the first couple because it was just our friends coming to shoot it. It was very independent, leading from the front, which is what I like to do. Then we began to accrue material because Marty was all for it. He wanted to do it. We had access to some archives, including those of his company. Then Apple came on board. Then I still thought that I was making a feature film for over a year, but then I realized I couldn’t fit in. I had to expand. I really felt it needed to be multiple parts. 

Damon Cardasis and Cindy Tolan, my producers, were really behind the idea. So, my editor, David Bartner, and I started sketching it out. First, we thought it was two episodes; then we began to realize that it had a structure quite different from what I thought. We really started busting down the walls and realizing, no, this is a long piece of work. It’s five hours instead of an hour and a half. That’s when we began this other, big journey, and luckily, Apple and Molly Thompson, who was the executive that we worked with there, who was the head of docs there, were very open to it. That’s one of the good things about our time now, that a filmmaker has that elasticity.

The structure reminded me a bit of “The Last Movie Stars,” Ethan Hawke‘s documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, which is also, I think, six parts. That length allows you to really delve into the various eras of a talent and how their careers evolve as their personal lives change. Was that on your radar at all while you were working on this, even though they were being made seemingly in parallel?

I believe that’s true. I think I saw it a little later, but by then, we knew what we were doing in terms of the number of episodes.

Obviously, you’ve made a documentary about your father, Arthur Miller, and you’ve made a lot of feature films. I’m always curious about filmmakers who go back and forth between documentary and narrative. If you find one more challenging than the other? They’re such different modes of filmmaking, unless you talk to Werner Herzog. 

The big difference is that you don’t have a script for a documentary, or I don’t have a script for a documentary. So the editing is the writing, if you see what I’m saying. You have the words or the units of energy, which are the pieces of film, and then you’re putting them together in certain formatting for the set grammar or sentences, which are film sentences, right? And so that’s the process of writing, whereas with a screenplay and a narrative movie, I have a screenplay which I work on for a long time.

Now, it’s true that sometimes when I’m shooting a screenplay, it changes, and certainly when you’re cutting a feature film, the order of scenes can change. You cut scenes, you manipulate scenes. And there is an element of rewriting in feature film work, but, for the most part, the writing, in my case, has been done prior, whereas in documentary, you might have a sense of what the structure of the whole thing is, but you really are making it up as you go along.

One thing that I think is particularly important to Scorsese, both as a person and a filmmaker, is his relationship with faith. I love the way your film starts with him wanting to be a priest and sort of weaves in and out of his relationship with faith, much like a roller coaster. Was that something you knew early on was going to be a through line, or did you find that in the final edit? 

That was one of the things that drew me to him in the first place, actually, was knowing about his Catholicism. Then, knowing that some of the films were quite violent, he obviously had a fascination with those worlds. I thought, How do those things go together? I had an instinct, a hunch, that the spiritual journey was at the core of his whole life, but I didn’t know how. I think one of the journeys that I was on, and that you’re on when you’re watching it, is seeing how. How does that way of looking at the world go with the films? How did they create the films? And how do even the films that seem the furthest away from a religious point of view actually fit in with that point of view? To me, that was very, very interesting.

He is talked about as a violent filmmaker, but Scorsese’s violence really feels like internal violence that gets externalized, because these men don’t know any other way. But I never really knew that that was something Scorsese had in himself. It was really refreshing to have him discuss that. Was that something he talked about early on, or was it after several sessions that he felt comfortable talking about that?

I think we reached that point, possibly around the third or fourth interview, which would have been about eight or nine hours into our conversations. It was a way in. I used the films as stepping stones in terms of chronology, so I would know where I was going, but I was also following the breadcrumbs in terms of how he wanted to tell the story and flesh out the life around the films. 

There were a few films and projects that were left out that, as a fan, made me a bit sad. “Bringing Out The Dead” has a little bit of a mention. “Hugo,” I think there was a poster in the background at one point, and then “Boardwalk Empire,” there wasn’t anything. At one point, did you have an expansive version where you covered everything, or were you selective from the start? 

First of all, the documentary is not a filmography, so it’s essential to keep that in mind. Because of this man’s truly Shakespearean output, some films are not covered. One of the things I was afraid of was that it would become a list film, like often happens with documentaries on great filmmakers or artists, where the format is “and then he did this, and then he did this, and then he did this.” And that’s not what this film was. This film is really about the dance between the filmmaker, the artist, and the man, and how the man created the films, and how the films, in turn, created the man. It’s this back and forth, back and forth. 

Something like “Hugo,” in a way, is such a big subject that I would almost have to really make a diversion because it is a massive subject. I think it’s an absolutely fantastic film. So it has nothing to do with that. It’s more that I wasn’t able to embed it in terms of the storytelling. And that’s where, unfortunately, you know, the cruelty of having to cut stuff comes in. I mean, it’s terrible, but you can’t include everything. Like his television work, many of his documentaries are not covered. If I had started to try, you would also reach a point where, if you don’t shape something and don’t make strong choices to shape it, then the edit starts to diffuse the energy. 

I love that you called it a portrait, which is a nice callback to your film “Personal Velocity.” But I also like that you called it a portrait because it really is an exploration of how the art reflects him, as opposed to, like you said, a filmography. Whereas, if you were doing a film called “Scorsese: Filmmaker,” then you would absolutely need to do a deep dive into “Hugo,” because it’s so deep about his love of the craft and history of film.

Absolutely. Then what you’re saying is central to why I called it a portrait, because a portrait implies somebody is making the portrait. And if that’s my portrait of him, the way I see him, then I’m telling the truth as I saw it, and it leaves room for examination by other people. We do deal with thirty-two films, and that’s a lot, but you’re absolutely right. That’s correct. 

You’ve spoken with many of his collaborators, and I was wondering if there were anyone you would have hoped to include but weren’t able to, or if there were any bits that ended up on the cutting room floor during the shaping process?

Inevitably, some things are good but cannot be included. It’s also true of feature films. With “Maggie’s Plan,” there were forty-five minutes of dialogue that were cut from that film. That’s because very often somebody looks at someone, and in a movie that says more, you know, a picture’s worth a thousand words. Sometimes I write more than I need so that I can figure out what lands the best. However, similarly, there were some incredible stories, but another story made the point even better. You don’t want to repeat too much, as this can exhaust the viewer. You also have to keep feeding them. It’s about the drip feed of information, and how to keep pulling a viewer in. 

Films are a kind of hypnosis, right? You make a pact with the viewer, so it’s all about how to keep that string taut. You land the fish, and then you have to keep the string taut; if you’re too diffuse, the string gets slack, and the fish escapes. And you want the fish to come all the way through the series, to watch the whole thing. The big tension, for me, was how to keep the viewer’s attention while telling this story, which is also this man’s life, without making it a list or a filmography. Because it still has to function as a film.

I don’t know that I’d ever really heard his two older daughters speak about what it was like to be his daughter during those various eras of his career. He’s someone who has had a kid, it seems like, every fifteen years. I think it’s Domenica who says it was almost like each of them had a different dad. What was the process of speaking with his daughters and getting such personal stories from them?

Well, it was a privilege to be able to talk to them. I love how really different the three women are. They’re all different. They’re all partly reflections of the period of his life when they were born. With Catherine, you can still feel the shadow of his mother and the neighborhood, as she was deeply entrenched in that part of the family, and you could sense it. Then you have Domenica, and the era in which she lived is part of her. It’s the same with Francesca; it’s fascinating. It’s really interesting how that happens.

I was curious if you felt any parallels, as a daughter raised by a very famous creator, to any of their stories?

Well, I also have a half-brother and half-sister from an earlier marriage, and I ended up in the marriage that lasted. It’s a layering, and it’s complex. And so I was able to understand that domain, that sort of geometry, pretty well. 

As a filmmaker, making a film about a filmmaker, was there anything in talking with him or talking with his collaborators that helped you grow as an artist, or think about the art differently?

I think endlessly, and I don’t even know yet, because I haven’t made another film yet. But I do feel it’s a bit like I went to graduate school. I do think that’s what happened. I went to graduate school. I got to sit at the feet of one of the greatest film artists that’s ever lived. I got to listen to him, talk to him, think about and unpack his films, watch them again and again, and revisit some of the films that influenced him. I don’t know yet the impact of all that absorption. You don’t really know how an education like that will affect you. 

He has a wealth of cinematic knowledge and love, and I really appreciated the way you incorporated that throughout this film, providing little clips so that, similarly, if you’re a young student watching this film, it serves as a guideline to try to discover those films for yourself. Was that part of why you wanted to include film clips? 

Absolutely. No man is an island, and he synthesized enormous amounts of influence and made it his own, metabolized it and made it his own, and then invented things that had never really been presented before. He very much, really, completely submerged himself in cinema in general. I would also say that he is really almost like a film evangelist. 

His belief in cinema as an art form is so tremendous. There’s the Film Foundation and the work that he does in terms of preserving film, saving films, working with young filmmakers who wouldn’t necessarily have a voice, giving them the chance to make films. He is always looking for ways to advance this art form. I wasn’t able to make that aspect a significant part of this documentary, as I was telling a story, but it is such an important part of his life.

I think one of his daughters mentions that he’s always working. Did you find that to be true? Was it hard to schedule him, because he’s clearly always working on something? 

I have to say, I think that because of the pandemic, because he was unable to work for a while, he couldn’t make films. Nobody could make films. It put him into this place, both of interest, but also just being stuck in his study, and he was really excited to get out of there. So he traveled upstate and was on our porch. We did those first interviews, and that helped a great deal. He had all this extra time. By the time he could work again, we had established the roots, and he was committed. We then continued on as the protocol changed, and although we were still wearing masks, we could be inside, and so on. Once vaccines became available, we were able to proceed further. 

They were always very generous. I mean, my interviews with him could last four hours. One time, it went so long that I had to stop because I couldn’t really see him anymore. We had a Zoom interview once, which isn’t in the film, except for the audio. We use quite a lot of that audio. It’s a great interview, but it didn’t look as great visually because it was on Zoom. But during the interview, there was no one in the room with him, and I realized, wow, this is great. I thought I should come back and get rid of my whole crew, like they set up the cameras and then they leave. It worked, except we had to do a lot of reframing later, because he would move, and all of a sudden, he was down here, you know, at the bottom of the frame, or whatever, and we couldn’t change lighting. 

So at the end of this thing, where there was nobody around to change the lighting, I had to stop and say, “There’s no more light.” But it did make for what felt like more intimate conversations, I think. 

I think that really comes across, just how comfortable he was during some of these interviews to really share from deep inside himself. What, for you as a storyteller, does that feel like to know that you’re sharing such a deep part of somebody with somebody?

You mean with the audience? 

Well, I guess when you’re in the room, but also when you’re able to put it in the film. So both ways. 

In the room, it felt very much, weirdly, like we were all alone. I mean, in fact, we were all alone in a lot of those interviews, but there was a kind of bubble that formed around us. In a way, this was a twenty-hour conversation of sorts, over a period of years, and we would go pretty deep and drop back in. Because he was willing to do that, and because the chemistry worked. You just don’t know how those things are going to work out in terms of our minds and how they mesh with our personalities. 

In terms of sharing with the world. I’m grateful that he decided to adopt this attitude towards the film, where he was quite honest. I think that it could perhaps help another generation of people who might have known him just from “The Departed” period to think, oh no, there was this whole other very interesting part of his life, and that then they can go and discover the films again too. 

I also particularly loved how open De Niro was in his conversation with you. He and Schrader both talked a bit about the copious amount of drugs during the making of “New York, New York,” which is a crazy movie. I actually really love that film, but it’s always one of his that is thought of as a disaster. But then, when you see what was happening behind the scenes, it’s like a miracle that the movie exists. How many interviews did you conduct with De Niro that he was so open?

We did one interview. I’m not sure if he had spoken to Marty already, but he seemed to have some sense that that was the vibe, that this was for real, and this wasn’t going to be about deflection and stuff like that. I did know Bob a little bit, not in an intimate way. I don’t know exactly, except that once he knew that I knew certain things that Marty had been talking about, he was like, “Oh, okay, so that’s the kind of conversation we’re going to have.”

I thought it was refreshing to hear all the conversations you had with Scorsese’s childhood friends, particularly Sally, the friend’s brother who came in unexpectedly. That part was really funny. Those conversations reveal how much his films reflect, especially those early films, the people he grew up with. Were they all brought in through Scorsese?

I got the contact of Robert Uricola, Salvatore’s brother, through Marty, who was still in touch with him, and John Bivona, as well, who was another of his friends, and Joe Morale, who was Marty’s best friend growing up. Marty and his office helped organize these larger groups around the table and at the cafe as well. It was carefully thought through about who would be the best people to be in the same room with each other. De Niro had his friend, Butch Picarello. Then we had Robert Uricola and Marty. 

I do feel that, even though Marty didn’t see the film until it was basically finished, we made the film together. It’s hard to work, but I was following the breadcrumbs. I was going through his mind because he opened the doors and allowed for the connections. Then, when I saw certain things, I thought, ‘Okay, so I’m going to need an interview with this person, that person, or that person.’ Then sometimes, in the case of these larger get-togethers, he would help me figure out who could be there. I think for him, preservation is essential, and it was important that these people were documented. Robert Uricola just died recently. Robbie Robertson just died. You know, it’s crucial that these people were documented. 

What do you hope viewers, especially younger viewers, get from this series when they’re finished watching it? 

First and foremost, I want people to return to the films or see them for the first time. Many younger people are familiar with his films from “The Departed” onwards, or “Gangs of New York” onwards, so there’s a treasure trove waiting for them, including “Taxi Driver,” “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore,” and even “Mean Streets.” These are great, great films. “King of Comedy,” what a masterpiece, but not everybody knows that film. So that’s one thing. 

Another thing I find very beautiful is how many times in his life he failed and had to pick himself back up again, reinvent himself as a filmmaker, essentially, and start anew. I think that is inspiring on a personal level and as a filmmaker. I think that’s inspiring for anyone. You don’t have to be an artist. When we fall down, we have to pick ourselves up. And that’s tough, and he had to do it a lot of times, and that, to me, is very beautiful. 

In this column, I speak to women who make films. In my previous column, Sierra Falconer, who made “Sunfish (& Other Stories On Green Lake,” studied your film “Personal Velocity: Three Portraits” while she was making her own film. I was wondering if there are any other women who make films that either inspire you or whom you think readers should seek out?

Jane Campion was a huge influence on me, and I actually befriended her somewhat. I happened to be in Australia at a certain point, and I showed her a script I had, and she said, “I think you’re gonna have a career.” It was a truly empowering and optimistic moment for me. Because it wasn’t a given that you were going to get to make films as a woman in that period, you were thought of as a little bit ridiculous in a certain way. At least I was, I think, when I first said I wanted to make films. There was very little traction. And when she told me that, she was just about to make “The Piano,” actually, and look what happened there. So I would say she was the big one for me.

“Mr. Scorsese” premieres this Saturday, October 4th, at the New York Film Festival and will be available on Apple TV+ on October 17th.

Filmed in the wake of a revolution that gave way to a military coup, Hind Meddeb’s powerfully poetic documentary “Sudan, Remember Us” introduces to the world a generation of Sudanese activists, street poets, and ordinary people who are determined to fight for their freedom no matter what. This includes the film’s protagonists—Shajane, Maha, Muzamil, Khatab—and the voice of poet Chaikhoon, who have built a community together through their dreams of freedom and use of their artistic voices to shout their beliefs above the din of the militia’s bombs. The film premiered at the 81st Venice International Film Festival last year, before screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, and a plethora of other festivals around the globe over the past year.

Born in Paris to a linguist mother of Moroccan and Algerian descent and a poet father of Tunisian descent, Meddeb formed her worldview growing up between France, Morocco, and Tunisia. She studied at the Paris Institute of kPolitical Studies, holds a Master of Philosophy degree from Paris West University Nanterre La Défense, and has also studied German language and literature at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, as well as conducted research at the Free University of Berlin. Her work as a journalist has taken her all over the world and been broadcast on channels across the globe, including Planète TV in France, RTS in Switzerland, RTP in Portugal, Al Jazeera, and more. 

Her feature films reflect her North African roots, as seen in her debut film “Electro Shaabi,” which explores the titular new music genre popular in the slums of Cairo, combining folk song, electro beats, and freestyle rap. Her second film, “Tunisia Clash,” follows various figures of the Tunisian rap scene as they clash with police and those in power. She then made “Paris Stalingrad,” along with co-director Thim Naccache, about the refugees, including those from Sudan, who call the streets of Paris’ Stalingrad district home. During the film’s release, the revolution in Sudan had begun, prompting Meddeb’s Sudanese friends to encourage her to document the situation in their country. The resulting film, “Sudan, Remember Us,” is a lyrical ode to the strength of the Sudanese people, and a tribute to the eternal power of poetry and creating art as a tool of resistance. 

For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke to Meddeb about screening the film for Sudanese refugees, the immortality of poetry, the human stories at the heart of her film, and her hopes for a more empathetic world. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

At the film’s premiere at TIFF, several Sudanese refugees attending the screening discussed during the Q&A how this film reminded them of their country, of stories that had happened, and of their own personal experiences. I know you’ve shown this film in many places since then, and I was wondering how hearing those reactions makes you feel, as a filmmaker, knowing your film is touching lives like that?

The most powerful screening I experienced was in May of this year in Calais, in northern France. It’s at the border with England. Sudan was a British colony, so many Sudanese people have immigrated to England for a long time, often with family and relatives already there. When they leave the country due to the war or political reasons, they have been going to England for years, but the border is now closed. It’s almost impossible to cross this border or even obtain the necessary papers to travel to England. It’s been like that for years. 

We organized this screening in Calais, and approximately 250 Sudanese people attended. We organized it in collaboration with an NGO that supports local communities. It’s called Secours Catholique, which is the last NGO that is allowed to do this work, because the police are very, very brutal, the French police. Also, England is giving a lot of money to France to stop the people at the border. So the screening was incredible. They told us that they organize a lot of events, but this was the first time everybody came. Mothers with babies attended the screenings. There were so many people that some had to sit on the ground. The cinema was full, full, full. So it was quite impressive. And it was almost only Sudanese people, and also the French people, who were supporting and who knew them. 

At the end, it was incredible. There were a lot of young people in their twenties, and some of them wanted to talk, so they took the mic. One young man said he wanted to show the bullets that were in his body, which he received during the revolution. He said, “Everything that is in the film, I was experiencing it. On this day, at this demonstration, this happened. You left just five minutes before they started to shoot. And some of our friends were killed that day.” Other attendees were recognizing the buildings where they were living, and they said, “I should have been in the film. I saw my friend in the film.” It was crazy. They were sharing their experiences. And then at the end, when we came out of the cinema, some of them came to me and they wanted to hug me, and they said, “You gave us back our pride, because we forgot totally about what we did during the revolution. Because after the revolution, we had to go through the war, and after the war, we wanted to escape the war. So we had to travel to Europe, and we almost died so many times. And now we are at this border, and we are trying to cross.” Most of them were wounded, with broken legs, and such. They were young, like little wounded birds. 

It was terrible. I just wanted to hug every one of them. They also said they were humiliated everywhere; by the military during the war, by the people in Libya and in Europe, and they had forgotten where they came from, what they accomplished. They said, “Thank you for making this film, because it’s like keeping such a precious memory of something we did, and we should never forget. You gave us back our pride.”

I think it was the most powerful screening from a year of traveling around the world and presenting the film at multiple festivals and in various countries. That day, I decided I had to go back to Calais and sit, making portraits of everyone there, and so I’m going to do it as soon as I finish the tour. I’m coming to the US next week, and I also have the film’s release in Tunisia. It had already been released in England and France. It was very successful because in France, we have a lot of independent cinema. We didn’t expect it to do so well, to be honest, because it’s a very small production. I did everything by myself. I mean, the filming, I didn’t have a team. So it’s a film that was made with heart, humbly. It was a lot of time and love. That day, at the screening in Calais, I felt like I hadn’t done this movie for nothing.

But there is also a lot of pain. When I was in England, there was a lot of pain from the Sudanese community, people saying their country is being destroyed. There is nothing left. Saying everything I filmed was destroyed. What do you say to that? I was facing so much pain at every screening. There were numerous community screenings with NGOs, so in England, people from Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan attended to watch the movie. They said, “We recognize ourselves in Sudanese history. It’s the same that happened to our country.” Since I was a kid, I have seen so many countries being destroyed by war in the region, in the Middle East and North Africa. So there is a lot of pain. 

You mentioned that many of the people coming are young. And, obviously, the film focuses on this younger, united generation that sees more connections with each other than they see differences, and specifically, I think, a goal of shared freedom, as opposed to capitalism coming in and strip-mining the country and hoarding the resources. Do you think, from what you’ve seen, both in making this film and playing this film around and where we are as a global world, that there is hope with this young generation? 

Right now, the situation is very critical, so no, the fire is not there, but there are Sudanese people all over the world, like the Palestinian people. There is a huge diaspora, like the Lebanese people, the Iraqi people, and the Syrian people. Millions of people had to leave their country because of all these multiple wars. These people, they keep this fire in their hearts. That’s why this film is very important. I mean, the film is just a tool. When I say the film, it’s the poetry, the writings, all these things that the Sudanese people create. Among the Sudanese community, people are writing books, and there are other movies done by Sudanese people that are beautiful. Through art, this memory is preserved for future generations, and the fire remains alive outside Sudan. Right now in Sudan, it’s just about surviving, and there are massacres every day. 

However, based on my personal vision of the world, I think we should never give up. And, of course, when the military does what it does, it wants to rule the storytelling. And so one of the reasons for the war is to erase the memory of the revolution. To destroy the revolution and to leave so many dead people on the road that you only see death, and then you forget everything that happened before. So that’s why it’s so important to do art, because as the people say in the film, when you write a poem, through the poem, even if you’re killed, the poem will continue to go on its way, and you’re going to continue to live through the poem. 

That’s the meaning of the title of the film, because at the end of the film, you see a young man with a yellow shirt. His name is Karim, and he’s saying a poem. He says, these bullets were waking us up, were waking the youth up, and this bullet that killed you, brings us all together to take to the streets. This poem, I didn’t know when I was filming it, because that night it was an Iftar in memory of El Raya, the young boy who was killed just a few months after the military coup. Raya is the same one who is painted on the wall, and Muzamil, who is the painter, was his best friend. They were childhood friends. Karim, when he recites this poem, it is in the memory of Raya. What I didn’t know was that this poem was written by Raya. It was first recited during the demonstration by him, and it became a famous poem because someone filmed him, uploaded the video to YouTube, and then other kids started to learn it by heart. So through the poem, Raya that day, his voice was again among the people. This is something I wasn’t even aware of when I was filming. When I was editing and showing the footage to Muzamil, the painter, he told me the whole story. 

The last poem in the film is by Chaikhoon, a very young poet. He’s like 20 years old, and he doesn’t even consider himself a poet. He’s a computer engineer for a bank, specifically the Bank of Khartoum, but now he works in Doha, in the United Arab Emirates. Chaikhoon puts himself in the body of someone who was killed in a demonstration, and he gives a voice to a young demonstrator who was killed. From Paradise, from the sky, he’s telling the poem to his friends, and he’s saying, “When peace will come back, remember me. When you reconstruct the country, remember me. When you plant a tree, and this tree is going to be delicious with sugary fruits, and you’re going to taste them, remember me. So that is the title of the film. The idea of the title came from this poem, because the idea is, “I’m dead, but please continue to remember me through my poems, through my art, through what I accomplished, so I didn’t die for nothing.” 

This is the same idea that Muzamil in the film is saying at a certain point, when he says parents, when they lose a kid, they don’t want revenge, they don’t want blood, they don’t want the military to be killed. They just want their kid to have died for something. They want democracy. And what is democracy? It’s like collecting garbage, having a public school for free for everyone, having a public hospital where anyone who is sick can be healed, and having nice roads so that we can have our country. This is the reason for this whole revolution.

The Sudanese people, when they did this revolution, just wanted to reclaim their country, because Sudan, for years, has been a stolen country. In the West, we always present Sudan as a poor country waiting for charity or humanitarian aid. But it’s not that; It’s a very rich country. Sudan doesn’t need anyone because it has a vast amount of land, which provides fruits, and it has enough food to sustain its population. They could feed the whole continent. This is what the British colonists used to say: “With the agriculture of Sudan, you can feed the whole continent.

The second thing is that there is gold, uranium, and oil. So the country could be so rich. The people in Sudan are very educated, and so they are aware of that and of the neighbors who are always trying to start wars to steal the country. This is the entire story of Sudan, and it’s very important because it’s an untold story that remains largely invisible in the media. What I try to do with my films, particularly with this one, is to give a voice to them. And also make people from Western Europe aware of this story. People like me, I’m European, but I’m also African, and it’s maybe because I’m in between the two worlds that I’m aware of it. So I’m also trying to help people from America open their eyes and understand what is happening in Africa, which is very far from the storytelling of the mainstream media. 

You mentioned other films, and I know “Khartoum” premiered at Sundance. Ibrahim Snoopy Ahmad, one of the film’s co-directors, filmed some of the footage that you used. Were you two communicating while you were working on your films? How did you guys sort of start working with Snoopy?

I met him when I was in Khartoum and had already been working on my film for a few years. I met Snoopy during the military coup. All the footage that is really close to the military was filmed by Snoopy. Because he was very brave and not afraid, he was really at the front line of the demonstration. But, no, we didn’t communicate. I was working more closely with the people featured in the film, and I remain in contact with them. We did a short movie where they all give news about where they are and what they are doing. Shajan came with me to the film’s premiere at Venice, and she came with me to the Marrakesh Film Festival. Muzamil came with me to the Netherlands. Now he’s there. He’s asking for asylum there. We all went together to the Doha Film Festival. We are a very strong group, with every single person in the film. 

You stay rooted in the lives of these activists and these people whose stories you followed, and then at the end, you have all these facts. I think many American documentaries, in particular, begin with the facts, and then we may get to the human stories. So many documentaries now are filled with screens of facts, and then they lose sight of the humanity at the heart of whatever story they’re trying to tell. In your film, you get to know and love these people and understand their dreams for their country. Then at the end, you’re like, also, here are these facts you need to know. How did you land on this structure for your film?

No. I had a big fight with the producer, because they wanted me to do a voiceover with a lot of facts. So, I tried. At first, I did a voiceover in French, because I’m not very good at Arabic. My Arabic is like speaking Arabic with my grandma. It was a significant effort to write it in Arabic, so I first wrote a voiceover in French with a lot of facts explaining the whole situation, as my producer had encouraged me to do so. But the film was rejecting it. It was very strange. It was as if the film were an organic body, like something alive, a human being. And with the editor, Gladys Joujou, who is Lebanese, she speaks Arabic like me. We were like, no, it doesn’t work. It’s killing the vibe because the whole film was really made as a friendship.

It began with my friendship with Sudanese people in Paris, which I had formed during my previous movie. They pushed me to go to Sudan. I didn’t go to Sudan as a journalist who’s going to cover a war, a military coup, or a revolution. I went to discover the country with my friends, and when I arrived, I made new friends. You said I was understanding their dreams. It’s even more than that. I was sharing their dreams because their dreams are also my dreams for my own countries, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, and the whole continent, as I have family and friends all over. I was living in Egypt. I was living in Morocco. I have family in Tunisia, in Algeria, and in Morocco. My mom was living in Syria, in Egypt, in Lebanon. So I have such a strong connection to all these countries. And I love them so much, and I badly want them to have their countries back. 

It’s more than democracy. And by the way, the word in Arabic, madaniyy, means democracy, because democracy comes from demos, which means people, and cracy, which means power; power to the people. And madaniyy means citizen in Arabic. So the citizens’ government means citizens want their country back. This is my dream for the whole world. When I was shooting in 2019, a revolution was also happening in Algeria, specifically in Al Hirak, where one million people would gather in the streets every Friday. It’s the country of my grandmother on my mother’s side, and I was crying the first time I saw it.

If I could, I would have filmed in Algeria. There was also a sit-in at the same time in Baghdad in Iraq, with young people saying, “We are fed up with all these war leaders and war groups and clans and tribes, and we just want to leave. We don’t want war, and we want insecurity to stop.” At the same time, it began in Lebanon in the spring of 2019. It was also in Chile, because the prices were skyrocketing, and there was a right-wing president. They threw him out. In Russia, there were demonstrations, hundreds of people in the streets trying to remove a pro-Putin guy. In Hong Kong, people were fighting against the Chinese government’s change to the Constitution. Then, when the war started in Ukraine, it was very impressive, because there were demonstrations every day in Sudan. It was during the military coup, and the Sudanese people came to the streets with Ukrainian flags in solidarity with the Ukrainian people, because they have the same problem in Sudan. Wagner and the Russian people are present, supporting the militia, and exchanging gold for weapons, which are then given to committees in exchange for gold. The militia, in turn, gives gold to Putin. Russia has been involved in the wars in Sudan for years. So the Sudanese people hate Putin, and they understood that, of course, the Ukrainian people were paying for the revolution of 2014, where they kicked out the pro-Russian president. So everywhere where people are trying to make a revolution and reclaim their countries.

Back to the voiceover. I did it in French. It didn’t work. And then I had the idea with the editor that we should use the voice messages we were exchanging. I didn’t even know I’m going to use them at first. It was just the way we were communicating all the time. Then when we used it, we had this idea to create a voiceover that would be like a letter, like an open letter, so it’s not really a voiceover, it’s more written, and it’s a way to address the Sudanese people, rather than a voiceover that is giving you the facts from above.

The other reason I didn’t want to provide facts is that anyone can open the New York Times or The Guardian and read news about what’s happening in Sudan, but the film is giving something different. It’s giving a vision from the inside, something intimate, so you could feel close to the people, and at the end, it’s the opposite of what the news does, and that’s why we didn’t want to use facts. Some Americans, I know, are very frustrated. I was reading some reviews where people say, “We don’t understand this film,” because they’re not accustomed to this kind of filmmaking. However, many people in the audience disagreed. They said, “We’re so close to the Sudanese people.” And we, the Sudanese people, can share things with them. 

What do you hope people will feel when they’ve finished watching your film? 

I believe that as human beings, nobody wants to live in a war, and ultimately, war cannot last forever. The most horrific wars have an end, and peace always returns. It’s a movie I made because I deeply believe peace is going to return. This film is a tribute to people who deeply believe in peace and create space for it, as well as how to survive in times of war. As human beings, when you’re in such terrible times, the only way you have is through poetry, writing, and art. That’s the way to stay a human being. So I hope that when people watch this film, it’s going to inspire them and show them that as human beings, we all have that in common, and that Sudan is not a faraway country that has no relationship with us. We belong to the same planet, and I hope that when people watch this film, they understand that there is no difference between an American kid and a Sudanese kid. And we all belong to the same creative process. We should understand that as people, because in the storytelling of the media of the powerful people, it is done to try to make us feel we are far away from each other and have no empathy. And I hope with this film, I can create in the heart of everyone who can see it, this empathy that I have every day, when I walk on any street, when I see someone who is homeless, I feel like he shouldn’t be sleeping in the streets. We need to share the good. We need to share the wealth.

Are there any women who make films that inspire you, or other movies made by women that you think readers should seek out?

First of all, I would say that for me, being a woman was always an advantage when I was shooting the movie. First of all, because the bad people don’t take you seriously. So, for example, the military sees a woman alone with a camera, and they just feel bad for you. And at the end, even when I got arrested because I was a woman, it always ended in a good place. So it was really helpful. As a woman, you can enter everywhere and have a very intimate relationship with men, women, and children. I don’t know, but doors open more easily when you’re a woman.

To answer your question, I admire many women directors. The first names that come to my mind are Ava DuVernay and Angelina Jolie. I will tell you why, because Angelina Jolie, what I love about her is that she also talks about untold stories. And for example, when she did the movie “In the Land of Blood and Honey” about a Bosnian woman being raped in Bosnia. This is a story that was untold, and that is so important, about the racism against Muslim women, especially in Europe, and especially in my country, France. I have this dream of a world where we can live together. Because I, for example, love Femen, the women who do topless demonstrations. But I also think if a woman wants to be veiled or wear a Burkini, nobody should bother her, and that we should be in a world where everyone who is a woman is free to do with her body what she wants. Unfortunately, there are always people who tell women that bikinis should be forbidden. You also have the Islamist people who are trying to control the body of the woman in different ways. I love that she made that movie, which can help us see Muslim women in a beautiful light. And also, when she won the Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted,” she said, “I could have been born in Afghanistan. I could have been born in Sudan.” She went to Sudan twenty years ago to visit a refugee camp with women who were raped, because there was mass rape in Darfur, and it’s happening again right now. She consistently dedicates her time to these important causes, which is why I have such admiration for her. And with Ava DuVernay, I think it’s so important to have all these untold stories about Black American history. She’s a Black woman doing movies, and they are really big, and she became big and is now at the level where she can inspire a lot of other women of color, and also just women directors around the world. 

Additionally, my favorite film of the year was directed by Brittany Shyne. The movie is called “Seeds.” It’s my favorite movie of the year, and I would also like to say something about the incredible director, because it’s a movie made with love, and I cried so much while watching it. It’s such a strong story about people in New Orleans, centering on Black people, countryside people, who have this ancestry of enslaved people working in the cotton fields, and today they own these same fields, but they are not treated equally by the government.

It touched my heart so much because I think we need more films like that. Because you can’t imagine how many American friends I have who still have this vision that all Black Americans don’t want to work. They rely on the state for help, but they don’t take any action. And it’s such a big lie, you know? This film can completely change your perspective on America, being Black in America, and the ongoing inequality that persists. I think America continues silently. There are a lot of propaganda stories. We always see Black people as gang members and drug dealers. I filmed a report for French TV about the Fight for $15, when people were fighting to establish a $15 minimum living wage. So, I went to Chicago, and I was in the suburbs of Chicago, which are very poor, and people were engaging in community organizing. These places where nobody goes, because there are drugs, but 99% of the people there are not drug dealers. They’re just like, having three jobs and working so hard to send their children to school. I met incredible people at that time.

Recently restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive, Marva Nabili’s austere drama “The Sealed Soil,” the earliest extant feature film directed by a woman from Iran, is a marvel. Shot on location in the remote village of Ghalleh Noo-Asgar, the film explores the life of a young woman, Rooy-Bekheir (Flora Shabavis), who, like her country, finds herself amid a fitful transition between the world of traditions and modernity. 

Eighteen and unmarried, she is considered an old maid. Early in the film, she rejects yet another suitor. Stuck in a daily routine of chores, she finds freedom only when she is alone in nature. She watches as the younger kids of the village go to school across the way at a new, modern settlement. They get a taste of a country on the brink of change, a world Rooy-Bekheir both longs for and is frightened by. When her parents present her with yet another suitor, a nervous breakdown is misinterpreted as demonic possession, forcing Rooy-Bekheir to face her future once and for all. 

Although the film has never played in Iran, upon its release in 1977, it screened at festivals around the world, garnering comparisons to Chantal Akerman’s “Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Gertrud.” Praising the film’s external and internal examination of this young woman’s life, film scholar B. Ruby Rich wrote that the film shows “how desperate a thing a woman’s self-consciousness can be when neither the old ways nor the new offer her any escape from bondage.”

Born in Iran in 1941, Marva Nabili studied painting at the University of Decorative Arts in Tehran, where she met filmmaker Fereydoun Rahnema. She later starred in his film “Siavash at Persepolis,” which won the Jean Epstein Award at the Locarno Film Festival. Encouraged by Rahnema, Nabili moved to London and later New York City, studying filmmaking at City University of New York and Goddard College. 

Her debut feature film “The Sealed Soil” was named Outstanding Film of the Year at the London Film Festival, and Nabili received the Best New Director Award at Mostra Internazionale del Film d’Autore, Sanremo. Her film “Nightsongs,” which chronicles the lives of a Chinese immigrant family living in New York City, was one of the first screenplays developed through Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute and was later produced by the PBS series American Playhouse. 

For this month’s Female Filmmakers in Focus column, RogerEbert.com spoke to Nabili over the phone about bringing a Brechtian view to cinema, capturing the verve of life in remote villages before the Iranian Revolution, and stories that take place in transitional spaces.

The interview has been edited for clarity and length.

At what point when you were developing the story for this film did you realize you wanted to set it in the village?

My sister lived in the area. She had a house that was about a half-hour drive to this village. So I was looking around for some locations, and I found this village, and I fell in love with it.

What was it about the village that drew you to it?

It was what we call in Persian a castle, but it’s not really a castle. It’s a village surrounded by walls. So the little rooms that you see in the film are all inside this big wall. I had never seen anything like that. So I went there, and I looked at the villages, and I really liked them very much, and I thought that would be a good location.

Did you know right away you wanted to make a film about this generation of girls who are in this transitional space?

Yes, because I, as a young girl, was also refusing anyone who wanted to marry me, because I had just graduated and I was interested in finding out other people who felt like that. When I went to this village, there really was a girl who refused to get married, so I knew this was a good subject. I wrote my screenplay, and then I went there with Flora Shabavis, who was the only actress in the film.

And the rest of the characters are all played by the villagers who actually lived in the village?

Yes, everyone else, whatever they were doing in the film, that’s what they do. They just went about their day. 

Obviously, chickens play a really big role in this film, but without spoiling it for readers, I imagine the chickens were also part of the village’s daily life.

Yes, that’s what they had there. It was basically the only meat that they would eat. They worked on a farm, but the farm didn’t have any place for selling meat and all that. So they’ve raised a lot of chickens.

The way you lay out the scenes is almost painterly, yet you have these chickens that add to those layers. I imagine the chickens just sort of did what they wanted, or were you trying to sort of move the chickens into the frame?

No, no, I had no control over those chickens. It was fine with me. It was fun because that was part of the life of the people who lived in the village.

I had read that you studied miniature painting. 

Actually, I didn’t. I was fascinated by miniature painting, but I didn’t study it. I went to the university to study painting, but not miniature painting. So I graduated from the university, and then I was always fascinated by miniature painting because it was one of the major arts in Iran for a long time, and it still goes on. I thought this location looked like a little village in a miniature painting.

As you were placing your camera, were you thinking about trying to visually recreate that feeling of looking at a miniature painting?

No, not really. I studied Bertolt Brecht and was very influenced by his method, so I thought I’d have a Brechtian view of this whole place.

Many of these shots are incredibly long. Would you use an entire reel for one shot?

I shot on 16mm, so it wasn’t that hard. This wasn’t like 35mm, where you have to keep changing the reels. The length of the shots was really inspired by the pace of the village. That’s how they lived. I didn’t tell anyone what to do, except for Flora, so they were all doing what they always do. 

I love the contrast you create between her in the village walls and her going out to collect wood, her being by the water, and her taking her hair down, surrounded by that beautiful green grass. What were you hoping to evoke with that contrast?

Well, this was where she went to collect wood, and for her, it was like living in the woods, which were very green. She felt very free there. She wasn’t pressured by her parents or the villagers about not getting married, so it wasn’t a corner that she went to every day just to sit there and contemplate. She was very comfortable there.

Do you think that at that time, women had many spaces where they could be comfortable like that?

Well, this was out in the desert. What happened was that the Shah had recently built a village on the other side of this area where her parents live, and the kids, if you notice from the movie, go over to the other side to go to school because that was something new for the town that the Shah had built. Basically, they developed there so these people could move over there, but most of them didn’t want to move.

I thought it was really interesting the way you brought economics into that decision, like how they will have to start buying their groceries from the town store. It was almost as if, by moving to modern conveniences, they were giving up some of their own autonomy.

In most of the villages, everyone sat around and discussed whether they wanted to move over there. They were all thinking about that, but not my character. She wasn’t interested in the new village. But, at the end of the film, when you see her for the first time with the pot on her head, and she stands there because she’s gonna go to the other side for the first time. She somehow had to give up in order to start this new way of living. 

I love that a lot of the film is about these transitional spaces. She’s a girl going through transition to womanhood. The town is in transition. The country is in transition. What were you hoping to show about all these transitional states?

Everything around the country was becoming like that. They were trying to modernize. Because of the oil situation, the Shah was trying to improve the country, villages, and everything else, and bring modernity.

Do you feel like your film sort of still has something to say to modern times in Iran?

Well, I made this film in 1976, and I left Iran when we finished. I smuggled the film out because I didn’t know if the people who worked at the airport wanted to see something like that, and introduce an idea like that to the outside world. I smuggled the film out because Iran was changing, but not fast enough.

Have you been able to show the film in Iran yet? 

No. 

So it’s been over 50 years, and it still hasn’t screened there?

I left Iran and haven’t gone back since the Revolution. So I have not shown it there. I don’t know what their expectations are.

When you watch your film, can you travel back a bit to your country?

Yeah, I mean, I love it. That’s why I went to this village, because I love that kind of setup. And the people were very nice. They’re not nasty or anything like that. I just didn’t want to go there after the Revolution. Things had changed a lot. 

When the film was first released, you discussed in interviews how difficult it was for a woman to make films in Iran, but now, obviously, there are a lot of difficulties, I think for a lot of filmmakers in the country.

We used to have a very good film industry there. Very broad-minded and really nice filmmakers were there, because there was freedom. Also, the Shah wanted to modernize cities and wanted Iranian people to be modernized, not like the rulers that are there now. After the Revolution, it totally changed. What the filmmakers did then was very modern, but I don’t know what’s happening now.

What do you hope audiences today will take from your film?  

Well, I want them to know about this social problem that women had. In the villages at that time, women had to get married when they were very young, sometimes twelve or thirteen. But there were women who refused. That was my whole purpose: to show that things were changing.

Are there any filmmakers who influenced you or that you think people should seek out?

I got interested in becoming a filmmaker after Fereydoun Rahnema, my professor at university, who had made a documentary about Persepolis, decided to make a feature film called “Siavash at Persepolis.” Siavash is the name of a man who was a prince. Je asked me to play the role of the wife. So we shot that film in the ruins of Persepolis, and I became very fascinated by the process because it was a modern film. It wasn’t an old-fashioned kind of film. He had studied cinema in France. It encouraged me, and he continued to encourage me to leave Iran and study cinema. So I dedicated my film to him.